NYE Activity Tree & New Year’s Eve with Kids

New Years Eve. To be honest I have never been that into this holiday, it just feels like a lot when every fiber of my being is telling me it’s time to rest. I actually enjoy it more now with kids than I ever did when I felt pressure to be out and about though. At first glance it brings to mind champagne and party dresses, but as we have established our routine over the years, its gone from being something I don’t want to deal with to one of my favorite family celebrations.

New Year’s Eve for us has evolved into a night of family games, nature and fun fortune telling activities. We started off years ago with one of those “do an activity every hour countdowns,” that are all over Pinterest, but seriously who’s little kids can wait an hour between activities?? (No really I want to know!) This has morphed into a collection of fun stuff that we do at a pretty random pace until we get tired and then we watch a fake ball drop. We also have an all-appetizer dinner, known as “tiny dinner” to my kids, which they find fascinating and special. (And I buy it all frozen and don’t make a thing- which is exactly what I need!) I have set the activities up a few different ways over the years, but my favorite is to write activities on clothespins or decorative pieces of paper and hang them from some branches in a vase. A New Year’s tree if you will. It’s simple to make and doesn’t require much bandwidth to setup. I save them from year to year so I only have to update them if we add something new!

NYE Activity Tree

You can make this as simple or as fancy as you like. I use watercolor paper for the stars so that they are rigid, but you can use whatever you have on hand.

Materials:

• paper
• star template
• scissors
• watercolor paint (optional)
• gold paint pen (optional)
• gold pens (or whatever color you prefer)
• ornament hooks
• a sturdy branch or two
• vase
• rocks
• gold spray paint (optional)

Method:

Use the star template to cut out a bunch of paper stars. Decorate them if you want, or leave them blank. I painted mine with a little metallic watercolor paint and outlined them with a gold paint pen.

Write your chosen activities on each star. (see below for some suggestions.)

Attach an ornament hook to each.

Place your branches in the vase and weigh them down with the rocks. This is entirely to prevent tipping, you can use something else if you prefer. Because I use sweet gum branches with the seed pods still attached I like to spray paint then gold so they look like little NYE balls, but that is completely optional.

Hang the stars all over the branches and set in the middle of the table.

As the evening progresses let kids take turns picking an activity by lifting a star off the tree.